


Things We Lost in the Fire

by ASassyDog



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Admitting sadness makes you gay., Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1320502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASassyDog/pseuds/ASassyDog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're managing, all of you, without your manager. You try this line on Pickles three days after the attack and he punches you in the mouth. He's not managing so well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Lost in the Fire

_Things we lost to the flames,_  
_Things we'll never see again,_  
_All that we've amassed_  
_Sits before us, shattered into ash._

You remember being seven and catching crayfish with your father the day after your first dog, a chunky black and white mutt you called Gator, died. In the middle of salting the crayfish so they'd shit and puke their guts out (so gross, but also the inspiration for one of your first songs), he'd said to you, “Don't worry, kiddo. He was a happy son of a gun. Thinkin' about it too much'll just make it worse.” And then he'd offered you a warm can of beer. You drank it all.

When you came home, stomach threatening mutiny and vision blurry, your mother showed you the framed picture of Gator, along with his tattered collar, that she'd placed on your nightstand. You threw up twice and went to sleep. You dreamed of Gator drowning in a salt bath, but he was panting and grinning in that same excited way he would when you were about to throw a stick for him. You figured your dad must have been right about him being happy.

Was Charles happy before he died? You weren't sure. He had taxes and nice suits and expensive brandy, and that seemed to be enough for him. You'd once seen him iron a dress shirt and then breathe in the smell of steam and crisp linen before he noticed you were in the doorway, and if that wasn't the dumbest fuckin' thing ever to be happy about, you didn't know what was.

You're managing, all of you, without your manager. You try this line on Pickles three days after the attack and he punches you in the mouth. He's not managing so well.

*

You're all staying in some crappy Mordhaus-owned motels while the Klokateers try to return the burnt carcass of your home to a livable state. It reminds you of the old days, no manager and a seedy motel with peeling wallpaper and beds someone's probably died in, but this time you each get your own rooms and you've got a shared bathroom with running water that's only rusty for a few seconds after you start it. You've also got a grim reminder of what you've lost, the smell of kindling and burnt flesh wafting downwind every so often to make your eyes sting and the back of your throat burn.

Pickles spends most of his time in his room, wandering out from time to time to yell for another case of beer or more pot. You've joined him a few times, powered through two and a half cases easily while you didn't say a word to each other. Everyone else mostly does their own thing. Skwisgaar practices endlessly, checking and rechecking the alignment of his guitar's neck. Murderface scrambles to replace his precious historical artifact collection; he's already spent at least a million dollars on eBay and sketchy auction sites. Toki's still drinking, but he's down to one bottle of vodka a day, which is something, you suppose. Altogether, you're doing okay enough, you guess.

*

On the seventh night since That Thing, Pickles stumbles into your room in nothing but a pair of stained underpants and a cigarette-burned motel blanket. He's got a case of beer and a baggie of weed and he looks like shit. You tell him so, and he laughs weakly. You've told him so for the last four days, and he hasn't said a thing, just given you that same dumb gurgling chuckle, like he's choking on his own tongue and laughing as he dies.

Like the last four days, you both end up laying on the bed, leaning against the headboard; it's cramped, but it's the only way you can pass the joint back and forth without having to reach very far. You make very sure not to touch him. As you're taking another puff, he says something you can't make out, but you grunt like you've heard him, because it's the first thing he's said to you in four days.

“I miss him, Nate'n.”

You almost swallow the joint whole.

“Yeah,” you say. “What happened... it fuckin' sucks.” You hand it back to him.

He's chewing on the end of it instead of taking a proper hit, and getting drool all over the fucking place. It's gross. You tell him he can fuckin' keep it, you'll roll your own. He takes a swig of beer in response.

“Y'knew, didn't you? About that stuff with me 'n' Charles. When I was still in Snakes 'n' Barrels?”

You pause while you roll your new, drool-free joint. “This is getting way, way too close to caring,” you say finally, and Pickles chokes on his beer. He coughs and you temporarily break the 'no touching' rule to smack him on the back a half dozen times, until he's wheezing and has hopefully dislodged the beer from his airway and the conversation from his mind.

Once he catches his breath, he doesn't continue his dumb gay story. You're in the clear. He leaves twenty minutes later, the half-finished joint still wet between his teeth and all his gross feelings channeled into the one-two stomping of his feet. His sense of rhythm is good even when he's in a shitty fucking mood. That's why he's your drummer.

You fall asleep and don't dream at all. You wake to a churning in your gut like your liver's punching itself to death and when you crack your eyes open, you find your pillow spattered with little droplets of blood. Your last transplant was a week before The Thing. Your liver is fucking _fine_. Your drummer's not.

*

You recover Charles' Gear folder as soon as the Klokateers say it's safe to reenter Mordhaus. In it, you find a picture of Charles, taken the day he'd received his mark. He's staring straight ahead and not smiling and he looks just as boring and robotic as ever. The picture is so small and the paper so flimsy you’re not sure if your idea will work. You take a pair of scissors to it, leaving rough paper and jagged slivers around the edges. You burn the rest of it.

You paste the tiny picture onto the back of index card. On the other side, you write “Sorry” in messy permanent marker. You leave it on Pickles' bedside table, along with a few drops of choked-up blood, while he's sleeping, away from his ashtrays and tipped-over beer bottles.

The next morning, you haven't puked blood at all, and when he comes to your room there's a small golden locket around his neck. In the shared bathroom, the cut up remains of an index card are half-buried in a trash can. The photo is nowhere to be found, but you're not stupid.

You kept Gator's picture for a long time, too.

_Do you understand that we will never be the same again?_  
_The future's in our hands and we will never be the same again._  
_These are the things, the things we lost,_  
_The things we lost in the fire, fire, fire._

\--Bastille, “Things We Lost in the Fire”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Things We Lost in the Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3375110) by [Elendraug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug)




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